1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a cooling system for an internal combustion engine wherein a liquid coolant is permitted to boil and the vapor used as a vehicle for removing heat from the engine, and more specifically to such a system which is compact and prevents relatively large amounts of engine coolant which "boil over" particularly at high engine load/speed operation from reaching the condensor or radiator of the system in a manner which wets the interior of thereof to the point of reducing the efficiency with which the latent heat of evaporation of the coolant vapor can be released to the surrounding ambient atmosphere.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In currently used "water cooled" internal combustion engine such as shown in FIG. 1 of the drawings, the engine coolant (liquid) is forcefully circulated by a water pump, through a cooling circuit including the engine coolant jacket and an air cooled radiator. This type of system encounters the drawback that a large volume of water is required to be circulated between the radiator and the coolant jacket in order to remove the necessary amount of heat. Further, due to the large mass of water inherently required, the warm-up characteristics of the engine are undesirably sluggish. For example, if the temperature difference between the inlet and discharge ports of the coolant jacket is 4 degrees, the amount of heat which 1 Kgm of water may effectively remove from the engine under such conditions is 4 Kcal. Accordingly, in the case of an engine having 1800 cc displacement (by way of example) is operated full throttle, the cooling system is required to remove approximately 4000 Kcal/h. In order to achieve this, a flow rate of 167 liter/min (viz., 4000-60.times.1/4) must be produced by the water pump. This of course undesirably consumes a number of otherwise useful horsepower.
FIG. 2 shows an arrangement disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Second Provisional Publication Sho. 57-57608. This arrangement has attempted to vaporize a liquid coolant and use the gaseous form thereof as a vehicle for removing heat from the engine. In this system the radiator 1 and the coolant jacket 2 are in constant and free communication via conduits 3, 4 whereby the coolant which condenses in the radiator 1 is returned to the coolant jacket 2 little by little under the influence of gravity.
This arrangement has suffered from the drawbacks that the radiator, depending on its position with respect to the engine proper, tends to be at least partially filled with liquid coolant. This greatly reduces the surface area via which the gaseous coolant (for example steam) can effectively release its latent heat for vaporization and accordingly condense, and thus has lacked any notable improvement in cooling efficiency.
Further, with this system in order to maintain the pressure within the coolant jacket and radiator at atmospheric level, a gas permeable water shedding filter 5 is arranged as shown, to permit the entry of air into and out of the system. However, this filter permits gaseous coolant to gradually escape from the system, inducing the need for frequent topping up of the coolant level.
A further problem with this arrangement has come in that some of the air, which is sucked into the cooling system as the engine cools, tends to dissolve in the water, whereby upon start up of the engine, the dissolved air tends to form small bubbles in the radiator which adhere to the walls thereof forming an insulating layer. The undissolved air also tends to collect in the upper section of the radiator and inhibit the convention-like circulation of the vapor from the cylinder block to the radiator. This of course further deteriorates the performance of the device.
European Patent Application Provisional Publication No. 0 059 423 published on Sept. 8, 1982 discloses another arrangement wherein, liquid coolant in the coolant jacket of the engine, is not forcefully circulated therein and permitted to absorb heat to the point of boiling. The gaseous coolant thus generated is adiabatically compressed in a compressor so as to raise the temperature and pressure thereof and thereafter introduced into a heat exchanger (radiator). After condensing, the coolant is temporarily stored in a reservoir and recycled back into the coolant jacket via a flow control valve.
This arrangement has suffered from the drawback that air tends to leak into the system upon cooling thereof. This air tends to be forced by the compressor along with the gaseous coolant into the radiator. Due to the difference in specific gravity, the air tends to rise in the hot environment while the coolant which has condensed moves downwardly. Accordingly, air, due to this inherent tendency to rise, forms pockets of air which cause a kind of "embolism" in the radiator and badly impair the heat exchange ability thereof.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,367,699 issued on Jan. 11, 1983 in the name of Evans (see FIG. 3 of the drawings) discloses an engine system wherein the cooling is boiled and the vapor used to remove heat from the engine. This arrangement features a separation tank 6 wherein gaseous and liquid coolant are initially separated. The liquid coolant is fed back to the cylinder block 7 under the influence of gravity while the "dry" gaseous coolant (steam for example) is condensed in a fan cooled radiator 8. The temperature of the radiator is controlled by selective energizations of the fan 9 to maintain a rate of condensation therein sufficient to maintain a liquid seal at the bottom of the device. Condensate discharged from the radiator via the above mentioned liquid seal is collected in a small reservoir-like arrangement 10 and pumped back up to the separation tank via a small constantly energized pump 11.
This arrangement, while providing an arrangement via which air can be initially purged to some degree from the system tends to, due to the nature of the arrangement which permits said initial non-condensible matter to be forced out of the system, suffer from rapid loss of coolant when operated at relatively high altitudes. Further, once the engine cools air is relatively freely admitted back into the system.
The provision of the separation tank 6 also renders engine layout difficult in that such a tank must be placed at relatively high position with respect to the engine, and contain a relatively large amount of coolant so as to buffer the fluctuations in coolant consumption in the coolant jacket. That is to say, as the pump 11 which lifts the coolant from the small reservoir arrangement located below the radiator, is constantly energized (apparently to obivate the need for level sensors and the like arrangement which could control the amount of coolant returned to the coolant jacket) the amount of coolant stored in the separation tank must be sufficient as to allow for sudden variations in the amount of coolant consumed in the coolant jacket due to sudden changes in the amount of fuel combusted in the combustion chambers of the engine.
Japanese Patent Application First Provisional Publication No. sho. 56-32026 (see FIG. 4 of the drawings) disclosed an arrangement wherein the structure defining the cylinder head and cylinder liners are covered in a porous layer of ceramic material 12 and coolant sprayed into the cylinder block from shower-like arrangement 13 located above the cylinder heads 14. The interior of the coolant jacket defined within the engine proper is essentially filled with only gaseous coolant during engine operation during which liquid coolant is sprayed onto the ceramic layers 12. However, this arrangement has proven totally unsatisfactory in that upon boiling of the liquid coolant absorbed into the ceramic layers, the vapor thus produced and which escapes into the coolant jacket inhibits the penetration of fresh liquid coolant and induces the situation wherein rapid overheat and thermal damage of the ceramic layers 12 and/or engine soon results. Further, this arrangement is plagued with air contamination and blockages in the radiator similar to the compressor equipped arrangement discussed above.
FIG. 7 shows an arrangement which is disclosed in copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 663,911 filed on Oct. 23, 1984 in the name of Hirano now U.S. Pat. No. 4,549,505. The disclosure of this application is hereby incorporated by reference thereto.
This arrangement while overcoming the problems inherent in the above discussed prior art has itself suffered from the drawbacks that as most of the coolant which is contained in the system under normal operating conditions is in the coolant jacket of the cooling circuit involved with the actual removal of heat from the engine, the engine due to the provision of the coolant jacket thereabout tends to be relatively bulky especially due to the need to provide a relatively large space within the coolant jacket above the cylinder head and the like highly heated engine structure for collecting the coolant vapor produced by the boiling of the liquid coolant and allowing the boiling forth and the actual coolant vapor to separate to the degree that essentially only coolant vapor flows from the coolant jacket to the radiator for condensation. Viz., if the dimensions of the coolant jacket, especially those of the cavities formed in the cylinder head in which the coolant vapor is collected are reduced in a manner similar to that possible with conventional forced circulation type arrangements, upon the coolant boiling with any particular activity, large amounts of boiling liquid coolant are apt to the discharged from the coolant jacket in manner similar to a pot on the stove "boiling over" and induce the situation wherein the interior of the radiator or condenser is wetted and the heat exchange capacity thereof drastically reduced.
In order to obivate this problem it is possible to add a separation tank of the nature disclosed in the above discussed U.S. Pat. No. 4,367,699. However, provision of same is very difficult in that it consumes a large amount of space which is simply not available in the extremely cramped engine compartments of modern automotive vehicles and if provided, due to the need to arrange same at a relatively high location on the engine (so as to enable the gravity feed effect utilized in connection therewith), it severely hampers even simple service operations such as spark plug replacement.
For convenience, the same numerals as used in the above mentioned patent application are also used in FIG. 7.